In Frog: A Story of Life on Earth (2025) by Isabel Thomas, the subtitle is critical. Sure, the cover shows a frog, and the first few pages show a kid exploring a pod full of frog eggs, tadpoles, and frogs…but then there’s a BIG twist. To tell the story of where frogs came from, Thomas goes back in time.
How far back? The beginning. This tells the story of where frogs come starting with the Big Bang. From there, we get the formation of basic elements, then stars, then planets, and specifically Earth, then water, evolution, and frogs.
The result is an amazingly sweeping perspective, one that gives illustrator Daniel Egneus the opportunity for wildly varied images. I mean, how many picture books feature the Big Bang? The collision of particles after that great explosion? Cell division and the emergence of multicellular organisms, all in vivid color?
As I hope is clear, I like and appreciate this book, but if a kid just likes frogs, they may get a bit impatient with, say, the creation of the known universe–and parents /teachers need to be ready to explain a lot more than what an amphibian is/the tadpole to frog transition.
